House Rules (13 page)

But it sounded like the GP was arguing that nearly all our funds belonged to them.

Ethan cursed. “We’ll have to pay them off. And even if we negotiate down the figure,
the check will be substantial. It will clear out a significant portion of our saved
funds. We won’t be bankrupt,” he said. “But if the worst-case scenario holds, we could
lose the nest egg that we’ve built.”

“How does it serve their long-term purposes to put vampires on the street?” Paige
asked. “That would only create public panic.”

“Because it would strongly discourage any other House from attempting to leave,” I
predicted, and Ethan nodded his agreement.

“They’re using you as an example,” Paige said.

Ethan rubbed his temples. “That’s likely correct. But for now, it’s irrelevant. We
focus on what we presently know, and whether we can negotiate a different result.
It’s quite possible the GP will be satisfied with hobbling us a bit, rather than destroying
us altogether.”

Given what I knew of the GP, I wasn’t sure I’d put “destroying us” past them. For
an organization created to help vampires survive human hatred, they weren’t doing
much to keep the Houses whole and healthy.

“I’ll turn in the Bentley,” Ethan absently added. “It was an extravagance, and certainly
something I can do without.” He looked at me. “I may need to borrow your car until
we can replace it with something more . . . suitable.”

“How ’bout a Schwinn with a saddle pack?” Luc asked.

“Denied,” Ethan said.

“Hey,” Luc said with a chuckle that was still tinged with insecurity. “We can do this.
We’ve been through hard times before. The Great Depression? The ’seventy-three oil
crisis? Capone’s reign of terror?”

Ethan nodded. “We will survive and be stronger as a result. We merely have to get
through this bit first.” He picked up the folio again and passed it to Malik. “Have
these materials messengered to the lawyers. I want them reviewing the documents first
thing in the morning.”

Malik nodded. “Liege.”

“Is there any chance they can fix this?” Luc quietly asked.

“Not without a court battle, and the last thing we need is protracted litigation on
a contract issue American courts don’t have the precedent to deal with.”

In the silence that followed that statement, he looked up at us and smiled mirthlessly.
“Sorry. I’ve already talked to the lawyers tonight. It means there’s no other law
on the issue, so the courts would have to interpret a contract between vampires that
was written centuries ago. The effort would be expensive, and the results unpredictable.”

Ethan looked at Malik, and they shared a long, silent look. Perhaps they were communicating
telepathically.

Malik nodded, and headed for the door, folio in hand. Whatever they’d discussed was
a done deal.

Ethan looked at his watch. “I’m speaking to the House in an hour. We’ll address it
then. You’re dismissed,” he said, and the vampires filed out.

Cashing in my “girlfriend’s prerogative” chip, I stayed behind, waiting until we were
alone again before looking at him.

“You’re all right?”

He ran his hands through his hair, which fell in a halo of golden blond around his
face. “I will manage. We all will.” He crooked a finger at me. “Come here, Sentinel.”

I walked into his arms, and he embraced me with relief, as if the act of touching
me removed the weight from his shoulders. That might have been the most flattering
compliment I’d ever received from him, nonverbal as it was.

We stood there in his office for a long moment, until a loud grumble echoed across
the room.

I stood back and grinned at him. “That was your stomach growling, wasn’t it?”

He put a hand against his abdomen. “I have Merititis. Gnawing hunger,” he clarified,
which made me roll my eyes. “We’ve a bit of time before I speak to the House. Perhaps
a bite to eat?”

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

He glanced around the shambles of his office—normally pristine, now covered in boxes,
binders, and stacks of paper. “In these humble surroundings, yes.”

“For you, I can manage ‘humble.’”

“You actually meant ‘for food,’ of course, but I’ll take what I can get.” This time,
his back was turned when I rolled my eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EGGSACTLY

A
s usual, Margot outdid herself. Ethan had asked for comfort food, and Margot decided
on a full diner-style breakfast: eggs, toast, potatoes, and sausage. Wearing her chef’s
whites, she rolled in a cart, silver domes covering the food and a glass pitcher of
orange juice on the side.

“That smells delicious,” Ethan said, clearing space at the conference table for Margot
to place the trays.

“We aim to please here at Cadogan House,” she said with a smile, winking at me as
she uncovered the plates and lit a silver candle in the middle of the table. “Ambience.”

“Appreciated,” Ethan said.

Margot made a small bow, then rolled the cart back out again and closed the door behind
her.

Grandiosely, Ethan pulled out a chair for me and gestured toward it. “Madam.”

“Thank you, sir,” I meekly said, taking a seat.

Ethan took the seat at the head of the table, perpendicular to mine, and poured juice
into our glasses. “A toast,” he said, holding up his glass. “To Cadogan House. May
she stand strong, financially and otherwise.”

We clinked our glasses together and I took a sip. The juice was delicious, with the
fresh bite and lingering umami of freshly squeezed oranges.

“So Michael knew Celina,” I said, digging into scrambled eggs.

“He did. Not all Masters are fortunate enough to have relationships like I did with
Peter. Some are more like the relationship I had with Balthasar,” he ominously said.

Ethan met Peter Cadogan, the House’s namesake, after Ethan had traveled Europe with
his sire, a vampire named Balthasar who’d rescued him from a battlefield. Ethan had
once said he’d considered himself a monster after he’d become a vampire; I’d wondered
if he’d thought the same of Balthasar.

“Fortunate that you met Peter,” I said.

Ethan nodded. “I was. He was a good man, and I’m better for knowing him. Many of us
mourned his passing.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever asked. How did Peter die?”

He genteelly pressed the napkin to his mouth. “Extract of aspen.”

My eyes widened. An aspen stake through the heart was one of the very particular ways
to kill a vampire. But extract of aspen? That was a new one.

“I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”

“It’s usually goes by more poetic names. Sometimes bloodbane or bloodberry, because
the particular variety of extract turns crimson as it’s prepared. It had a role in
alchemy and earlier sciences. Its secondary effect on vampires was a later discovery.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s a slow, death-dealing poison,” he said. He shoveled a mound of eggs onto his
fork.

“When was the last time you ate?” I wondered.

“Yes,” was all he said, loath to admit to his girlfriend how poorly he’d been taking
care of himself.

I took a bit of eggs that seemed positively dainty by comparison. “The complete reorganization
of a political system can be difficult for the schedule.”

Ethan snorted through his eggs, then coughed his way through a laugh. “Well said,
Sentinel. Well said.”

“So, back to Peter. He was poisoned. By whom? And why?”

“His beloved’s parents, unfortunately.”

My eyes widened. I loved a good story—I’d been a literature student, after all—and
this one sounded like a doozy. I plucked up a sausage roll and bobbed it at him like
a magic wand. “Elaborate.”

“Peter was a vampire. He fell in love with a woman who was not.”

“Human?”

“Fairy,” he said, and I winced, recognizing the drama.

“Yikes.”

“Indeed. Cadogan House was situated in Wales at the time, but we’d traveled to Russia.
Her name was Anastasia. She was the daughter of fairies of some repute—politicos with
connections to Claudia, who was still in Ireland at that time—and who’d gained a title
in the Russian aristocracy. Keeping face was very important to them, and they were
staunch believers that fairies shouldn’t mix with humans or anyone else.

“But Peter was in love,” he said, a smile crossing his face. His eyes went slightly
vacant, as if he were recalling. “You’d have liked him. He was a man’s man. Brawny.
Like me, a soldier before he became a vampire. He had a warrior’s mentality, and that
didn’t stop simply because he joined the night brigade, so to speak. He was Welsh,
didn’t really believe in vowels to speak of. He had a ruddy complexion—more like an
Irishman than a Welshman, although he wouldn’t even hear of the possibility that there
was Irish blood in his veins.”

He looked at me again, his gaze sharpening and the corners of his mouth dropping again.
“It was a great love,” he said. “A big love, and very emotional. Equal parts love
and hatred, I think, although neither Peter nor Anastasia would have admitted that.
Unfortunately, her parents hated Peter, hated that Anastasia was ‘lowering’ herself
by being with a nonfairy, and a vampire to boot. He was a Master vampire, but he was
neither fairy enough nor wealthy enough for their preference.”

“So what happened?”

“She wouldn’t end the relationship, so her father decided to end it for them. Anastasia
had a retainer—a weasel named Evgeni. He was a sneak, a liar, and a murderer. And,
unbeknownst to Peter, he was doing her parents’ bidding.”

“He poisoned Peter,” I said, understanding dawning.

Ethan nodded. “Slowly, and over time. Long enough and little enough that the poison
accumulated in his heart. By that point, it was equivalent to a staking, although
unfortunately a slower process. As it turned out, Evgeni’s motivations weren’t solely
about his hatred of Peter and his sycophancy to Anastasia’s father. He was infatuated
with her.”

My eyes widened. “That’s a nasty love triangle.”

“Indeed. One evening, after he dosed Peter with what he imagined was the fatal bit
of extract, he confronted Anastasia. Whatever the faults of her people, she was very
much in love with Peter, and had no interest in Evgeni, who was, frankly, an asshole.”

“He sounds like it.”

“But he didn’t take her rejection seriously; he’d convinced himself Peter had glamoured
her, that she wanted Evgeni and Peter was in the way. So when she said no . . .”

“He pushed?”

“And then some. He assaulted her,” Ethan said flatly. “Peter heard her scream. By
then he was so weak. We thought he’d been cursed by a witch.” He laughed mirthlessly.
“How silly that seems now.”

“Actually, it doesn’t. Consider what Mallory did. Also consider the fact that you’re
here right now because of her magic . . . and you’re eating your toast with a fork.
Why are you doing that?”

He shrugged. “It’s how it’s done.”

“That’s very much
not
how it’s done, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you eat toast before.”

Ethan was trying to lighten the mood, I realized. Doing something unbelievably pretentious—even
for Ethan—and trying to make me laugh. But this story was too sordidly, horribly interesting
for me to be distracted by vampiric foibles.

“Anyway,” I said, “Peter heard her scream?”

“He ran to her. I rushed into the room just in time to see him pull Evgeni away. Anastasia
was petite—a wisp of a thing—but she fought him like a hardened soldier. She just
wasn’t big enough. . . .” Ethan trailed off, shuddering at the memory. “Weak as he
was, Peter was still a vampire. He threw Evgeni across the room, and then he collapsed.
Her parents rushed in and thanked Peter for saving their daughter’s virtue—Evgeni
was a fairy, but his caste was too low for them. A few seconds later, it was over.
Peter was gone.”

“He turned to ash?”

“Before our eyes. Extract works more slowly than staking. And the worst of it was,
there was nothing that could be done in the interim.”

“He knew he was dying?” I quietly asked.

Ethan nodded. “And we knew it wasn’t a curse. Evgeni forcibly confessed to it, and
to Anastasia’s parents’ role. But Peter’s act of saving her seemed enough to sway
them. The floor was stone—big chunks of stone with jagged edges. I kneeled there beside
him as he passed. My knees ached from it—from kneeling on that cold stone.” He looked
up at me. “Isn’t it odd that I remember such an insignificant thing from so long ago?”

“Memory is a powerful thing,” I said. “The pain probably set the memory, sealed it.
I bet you remember the smell of the room, too.”

Ethan closed his eyes. “Amber,” he said. “Anastasia’s home always smelled warm and
rich. Heady summer roses. Roasted meats. Ale. But mostly amber.” He opened them again.
“I haven’t told that story in a long time. I’m glad I’m telling it to you. It’s important
that someone know the history, especially since it’s being rewritten as we speak.”

I reached out and put a hand over his. “I’m really sorry for your loss. Peter sounds
like a good friend.”

Ethan nodded. “The curse of being immortal, Merit, is watching the passage of those
you love—even those who aren’t supposed to leave.”

We sat quietly for a moment. “What happened to Evgeni?”

His eyes flattened. “He was dispatched.”

My blood chilled a bit. “You killed him?”

“I avenged Peter’s death and Anastasia’s attack. Her father was too cowardly to do
it.”

That was an effective reminder that Ethan had lived most of his life in another time,
a time during which life and death were bargained differently. I wouldn’t call him
cold, but he had the capacity for detached violence if he believed it was necessary
and honorable. Violence he didn’t shun, and for which he wouldn’t apologize.

“What about Anastasia?”

“I don’t know. I lost track of her after Peter passed. As far as I’m aware, her parents
went back to insulating her from the world, at least the vampire portion of it.”

“They must have been relieved,” I said. “I mean, horrifically so, but still.”

“They were thrilled, at least as much as fairies will ever show. Two problems addressed
at once. The vampire wooing their daughter was dead, as was the fairy who’d attacked
her.” He crumpled his napkin on the table and crossed his legs. “You’ve met Claudia,”
he said. “I take it you’re familiar with the fairies’ conception of value?”

“They like money and treasure,” I said. “They’re less big on emotions, including love,
at least that they’ll admit.” Claudia had had an affair with Dominic Tate, Seth Tate’s
evil twin, and although she’d clearly been infatuated with him, she denied love was
anything fairies deigned to involve themselves in.

Ethan nodded. “All true.”

“The dragon’s egg,” I said, suddenly realizing. “Luc said a Russian duchess gave Peter
the egg. That they’d ‘bonded.’ Anastasia’s mother was the duchess?”

Ethan smirked. “She was, although I believe his summary changes a bit in each retelling.”

“Like a game of ‘telephone’?”

He looked at me quizzically. “What’s the game ‘telephone’?”

“It’s a party game,” I said. “You sit in a circle, and one person whispers something
to the person beside her, and she whispers it to the person beside her, and so on
and so on, until the last one tries to guess what the person at the beginning said.
The answers are always different after having been passed around.”

“Ah,” he said. “Then yes. It’s very much like that, although Luc’s got the gist of
it. The egg was a thank-you to Peter from the duchess and her husband for what he
did for Anastasia—if a posthumous thank-you. And it was a priceless thank-you, as
far as the fairies were concerned.”

Priceless not only because of its intrinsic value or its value to the fairies, but
because they’d actually
thanked
the vampires, when clearly there was no love lost between them.

“Score one for supernatural relations,” I said.

There was a knock at the door, which opened. Helen stepped inside. “The vampires are
assembled.”

“Thank you, Helen. We’ll be with you in a moment.”

Helen nodded and exited again, closing the door behind her.

By the time I looked back at Ethan, he was well into Master vampire mode: his expression
blank, his shoulders back, his chin authoritatively set. He adjusted the cuffs of
his shirt before glancing at me.

“I think you’ll enjoy this particular performance, Sentinel,” he said.

I wasn’t sure exactly what he had in mind, but I wasn’t about to doubt him.

And, of course, I took a moment before heading inside to share the evening’s most
important news in a quick text to Mallory:
ETHAN EATS TOAST WITH A FORK
.

It took a moment before she responded.
DARTH SULLIVAN = PRETENTIOUS HOTTIE
, she responded.

I really didn’t have a reason to disagree with that. But I loved that we were talking
again.

* * *

The House’s ballroom was on the second floor, right beside the House library. It was
a beautiful space, with wood floors, high ceilings, and majestic chandeliers that
cast golden light around the room, although the nervous magic felt electric enough
to illuminate the space on its own.

Michael Donovan stood with Lacey in the back of the room. They chatted together quietly
and familiarly, probably having known each other during Lacey’s time at Cadogan House.
They both glanced at me as I followed Ethan inside. Michael’s glance was pleasant;
Lacey’s was suspicious.

I smiled pleasantly back at both of them—I was a grown-up, after all—as Ethan made
his way to the raised dais at the front of the room. Hands in his pockets, he waited
until the vampires quieted.

“Good evening,” he said. “Thank God it’s been quiet here tonight.”

The crowd offered a good-natured chuckle. We all knew when to laugh at the boss’s
jokes. But the tone changed quickly.

“I’m going to dispense with the pleasantries,” he said, “and get to the point. Tomorrow,
in a ceremony here at midnight, we will exit the GP. The ceremony is not long, but
I expect Darius will have no shortage of wisdom to pass along. When the ceremony is
complete, our House will no longer be affiliated with the Greenwich Presidium. Nor
will we be members of the North American Vampire Registry.”